Eugenicists also developed close ties with the newly emerging profession of
psychometrics, the psychological theory of mental measurement, which was eagerly being
employed to develop standardized IQ tests. A Frenchman, the psychologist Alfred Binet,
published the first standardized test of human intelligence in 1905. But it was an
American, Lewis Terman, a psychology professor at Stanford, who thought to divide a test
taker's "mental age," as revealed by that score, by his or her chronological age
to derive a number that he called the "intelligence quotient," or IQ.
Terman used this scale and developed the Stanford-Binet IQ test for preschool
children. Another prominent
American psychometricians was Robert Yerkes the psychologist from Harvard who designed
and directed the administration of the Army IQ tests during World War I. The
psychometricians believed the mental functions they were measuring were innate, or
genetically determined, and therefore that training and education could accomplish only as
much for certain social and ethnic groups as the "raw material" of their mental
capacity would allow. For their part, eugenicists welcomed the IQ test as an
objective and quantitative tool for measuring innate mental ability.
| 10. Statistics of levels of
intelligence collected by the US Army 
|
The American IQ
promoters scored a great coup during World War I when they persuaded the Army to give IQ
tests to 1.7 million inductees. It was the world's first mass administration of an
intelligence test, and many of the standardized tests in use today can be traced back to
it. The test used the basic technique of measuring intelligence mainly by asking
vocabulary questions (synonyms, antonyms, analogies, reading comprehension). On the
basis of IQ tests given to immigrants arriving at Ellis Island, eugenicist Henry H.
Goddard "discovered" that more than 80 percent of the Jewish, Hungarian, Polish,
Italian, and Russian immigrants were mentally defective, or feebleminded. Goddard believed
that such a defect was a condition of the mind or brain which is simply transmitted as a
genetic trait. There was no attention paid to other factors that may have had a big affect
on the test scores. Tests were all given in English and under a very strenuous
environment to immigrants after traveled across the Atlantic Ocean. It would be impossible
to rate real intelligence by using a test that is based on only verbal skills to someone
in a language they are illiterate in. Eugenics was first embraced politically as
a scientific means of halting the rising stream of "defective" immigrants who
came to the United States from 1880 to 1914 seeking relief from the economic problems
besetting Europe. These new immigrants arrived principally from Eastern and Southern
Europe, the Balkans, and Russia and many were Jewish. These groups were
ethnically and culturally distinct from earlier waves of foreigners, such as those in the
mid- nineteenth century who had migrated mostly from Anglo-Saxon countries of Western
Europe such as Germany, England, Ireland, and Scotland. To many Americans these new
immigrants were considered "the dregs of humanity" and mentally deficient
(as confirmed by tests such as those Goddard administered at Ellis Island), socially
radical (many had been involved in trade-union activities in Europe), and willing to work
for low wages, thus taking jobs away from hard-working Americans. |
 6. A group of new Immigrants to America |
"Some
day," said Theodore Roosevelt in 1910, "we will realize that the prime duty, the
inescapable duty, of the good citizen of the right type is to leave his or her blood
behind him in the world."
A movement known as "progressivism" and its political incarnation, the
Progressive Party, whose representative, Theodore Roosevelt, held the presidency from 1901
to 1909. Progressive ideology, was seen as the new and "modern" approach, and
hence "progressive" by the standards of the day. |
 11.
Theodore Roosevelt |
 |
12. Eugenics Text book and 13. An eugenics
course description |
They called for rational planning and
scientific management of every phase of society. Economically they substituted
laissez-faire views for an emphasis on state intervention and promoted the use of trained
experts in setting economic and social regulatory policies. The movement preached the
doctrine of efficiency, which applied cost-benefit analysis and emphasized solving
problems at their root, rather than after a crisis has arisen, for example, as in
preventive medicine. Eugenics was first embraced politically as a scientific means of
halting the rising stream of "defective" immigrants who came to the United
States from 1880 to 1914 seeking relief from the economic problems besetting Europe. |
 |
 14.
Birth control book edited by Margaret Sanger |
The Eugenics movement quickly
became standard education in high school Biology and College. By 1928, the American
Genetics Association boasted that there were 376 college courses devoted exclusively to
eugenics. High-school biology textbooks followed suit by the mid-1930s, with most
containing material favorable to the idea of eugenical control of reproduction. It would
thus have been difficult to be an even moderately educated reader in the 1920s or 1930s
and not have known, at least in general terms, about the claims of eugenics. Eugenics has changed the structure of American thought on pregnancy and
childbearing. It has established basic conventions for academic work on race and for
observational research more generally. Eugenics has provided a very real and deep
historical root for resistance to fertility control services. Importantly, eugenics
provides us with an example of a program of well-studied practices, scientifically
justified and popularly accepted in its time that appears glaringly unethical in
hindsight. Thus, it demands from us careful scrutiny of our own research, arguments,
political and programmatic policy, by a standard stricter than that of conventionality at
the present point in time. |
Weegee's hilarious photograph of a showgirl pretending to read "Apes,
Men and Morons," written by the Harvard anthropologist Earnest A. Hooton, captured
the populist spirit of the eugenics movement. As you can tell, not every one was
enthusiastically for or against the movement. It was the thing to do but here it's just an
image, this showgirl might have been the kind of person affected by the movement.
15. Wegee (Arthur Fellig) Showgirl reading
Apes, Men and Morons, ca. 1939 © International Center of Photography
| At state and local fairs
during the 1920s and 1930s, the AES sponsored lectures and exhibits intended to
demonstrate principles of heredity and the menace of unchecked breeding among the unfit
(right). "Some people are born to be a burden to the rest," read one sign
prominently displayed in the Society's "flashing light exhibit" (left). On this
panel, four red lights were set to flash at various intervals, driving home the point of
the text. While a new child is born in America every 16
seconds, it claimed, every 48 seconds a feeble-minded child is born, every 50 seconds
comes a criminal ("Very few normal persons ever go to jail"), but only every
seven and a half minutes is a truly creative and capable person born. As for the
pocketbook, every 15 seconds, $100 of each taxpayer's money goes to support the mentally
and morally defective. The threat to American society, according to eugenicists, was
clear: the dangerous and defective were reproducing too quickly, while the normal and
advantaged of this nation reproduced too little. |
 16. A light flashing exhibit used in 1926 |
Eugenicists argued that if unemployment and crime
resulted from the behavior of genetically inadequate persons, then the most rational
solution was to prevent those types from being born in the first place. They contended
that it was inefficient to allow the biologically degenerate and unfit to reproduce,
merely to fill the insane asylums, hospitals, and prisons with defective people that the
state must support the rest of their lives.
Such efficiency arguments permeated eugenic literature.
Eugenicists pointed out Ada Juke (pseudonym) as one example. She was a young woman
whose impoverished descendants were the subject of one of the first eugenic studies by
American sociologist Richard Dugdale in 1874. It would have cost less than $150 in 1790
for the state of New York to have sterilized Ada Juke in 1874 while the estimated cost of
caring for her descendants by the 1920s had topped $2 million.
| Using the argument for national
efficiency, eugenicists successfully lobbied for the passage of a number of state
eugenical sterilization laws in the 1920s and 1930s. Eugenical sterilization was
aimed specifically at those individuals in mental or penal institutions who, from
family-pedigree analysis, were considered likely to give birth to socially defective
children. Sterilization could be ordered any time after a patient had been examined
by a eugenics committee that was composed of a lawyer or family member representing the
individual, a judge, and a doctor or other eugenic "expert." More
than 30 states had enacted such compulsory sterilization laws by 1940. Indiana was the
first with a eugenical sterilization and it went into effect in 1907. By 1941, more than
60,000 eugenical sterilizations were performed in the United States. Most state
sterilization laws were not repealed until after the 1960s. This
group of men were handed these signs given to them by eugenics supporters. From right they
read: "I cannot read this sign By what right have I children?"
"I must drink alcohol to sustain life. Shall I transfer the craving to others?"
"Would the prisons and asylums be filled if my kind had no children?"
(I vote as bankers to myself a.k.a. the State.)? "Should I be allowed to
propagate?" |
 17. Men on Wall Street (NY) holding
pro-eugenics posters |
18. Carrie Buck pictured on
the cover of a book written
about her case in the 1980s |
Carrie Buck, a poor white
girl born to a poor white mother. After being raped by a member of the family that
fostered her, she became pregnant and was sent in disgrace to the Lynchburg Colony, a
state institution first set up as a colony for epileptics. There she encountered Dr.
Priddy who was an enthusiastic social engineer with a sterilizing program of that had been
blocked by a law suit. He wanted to sterilize Carrie to prevent her from having more
children. With the help of local politicians and Harry Laughlin they pushed the case of
Carrie Buck through to the Supreme Court, hoping to set a precedent that would allow them
to continue their work. The expert witness who reported on Carrie's mental state was
Laughlin himself, who had never met or talked to her. 'These people,' he wrote,
'belong to the shiftless, ignorant, worthless class of antisocial whites of the South.'
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes agreed. Holmes is quoted stating that "three
generations of imbeciles is enough." He had decided that it was constitutionally
legal for states to sterilize anyone they decided was eugenically undesirable. "The
principle that sustains compulsory vaccination," he elaborated, "is broad enough
to cover cutting the fallopian tubes." In other words, the general health of society
could be protected at the expense of the rights of individuals. |
| Calls for
restricting immigration grew so dramatically after World War I that in 1921 Albert
Johnson, head of the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, held a series of
hearings preparatory to introducing a bill that would seriously limit immigration,
especially from the areas characterized by the new immigrant groups. Any restriction had
to appear to be fair, not singling out particular countries or ethnic groups as targets.
To make sure that there was some scientific support that would make the restriction seem
rational Johnson appointed Laughlin of the Eugenics Records Office as "expert
eugenics witness." In this capacity, Laughlin testified twice before the House
Committee on Immigration and Naturalization. In 1922, he cited IQ data, Army test results,
and family pedigree analyses of institutionalized persons to demonstrate the defective
biological nature of the new immigrants. He emphasized that biology, specifically
genetics, was crucial in considering such social and political questions as those
surrounding immigration, Little or no attention had been paid to the biological aspect of
the problem in the past. |
 19. Immigrants leaving Ellis Island after passing inspection |
| Laughlin's point seemed
eminently rational. It was inefficient and wasteful of taxpayers' money to care for the
world's socially inadequate all their lives. If immigrations was limited they could just
be prevented from entering the country in the first place. This was excellent logic to the
legislators who worried about the nation's budget and facing staggering social problems of
rising unemployment, labor strikes, and inflation. |
 20.
Harry Laughlin (ca. 1929) |
In his second official testimony - in 1924, shortly before the
immigration bill went to the floor of Congress - Laughlin presented data showing that
prisons and mental asylums housed a disproportionate number of immigrants from the very
geographic areas that many nativists wanted to restrict. Two committee members,
representing largely immigrant constituencies, protested that Laughlin's information was
subject to a variety of interpretations. In response another biologist, Herbert
Spencer Jennings from Johns Hopkins University, was called to comment on Laughlin's data
and conclusions. Jennings thought Laughlin's analysis of the immigration data was grossly
overstated, but Jennings was given only five minutes to testify on the last day of the
hearings, and thus had almost no impact on the subsequent immigration legislation.
The Johnson Act, as it was called, duly passed in 1924
restricting annual immigration from any region to 2 percent of the number of residents
from that region already living in the United States as of the 1890 census. Since the vast
bulk of the new immigrants had arrived after that date, the Johnson Act, as hoped,
restricted these groups most heavily. Immigration from Eastern Europe fell from 75 percent
of the total immigration in 1914 to 15 percent after 1924. Laughlin and U.S. eugenicists
in general considered the passage of the immigration act a great political triumph.
 21. Statistics of Immigrant
criminals |
 22. Henry H. Goddard |
In a study of the "Comparative Social Traits of
Various Races" in 1921 (based on a series of questionnaires given to school
children), Davenport concluded that Germans ranked highest on qualities such as
leadership, humor, generosity, sympathy, and loyalty, while on these same traits Irish,
Italian, and in two cases (loyalty and generosity) British people ranked lowest. The Irish
ranked highest in "suspiciousness, " while Jewish people ranked highest in
"obtrusiveness."
Davenport assumed, of course, that most if not all such traits were
genetically determined, and the social behaviors of not only individual family members,
but also whole nations, were genetically fixed at birth. |
Henry H. Goddard was a very educated man earning three degrees on of which was a Ph.D.
in psychology from Clark University in 1899. He became an advocate of the Eugenicist
movement Dr. Goddard believed that feeblemindedness was an inherited trait that could be
eliminated all together by sterilizing feeble-minded individuals so they could no longer
reproduce. He was appointed Director of the Research Laboratory at the Vineland
Training School and served there for 12 years. During that time he made many breakthroughs
in the budding field of mental science. Notable studies include the English translation of
the Binet IQ tests, his work with intelligence testing at Ellis Island, his invention of
the term "moron," and a best selling book.
Henry Goddard’s book The Kallikak Family: A Study in the
Heredity of Feeblemindedness was one of the many best-selling books that led to the
enactment of sterilization laws. The book was so popular that it was even considered to be
made into a Broadway play. However, it is interesting to note that this book was
almost entirely fiction. The book depicts Martin Kallikak, a Revolutionary War solider,
and the descendents of two family lines that he founded. The first line was produced by
Martin Kallikak and a virtuous Quaker woman that he married. The descendents of this
"wholesome" line were upstanding citizens with no signs of mental retardation.
The second line was produced by an illicit affair Martin Kallikak had with a "wayward
girl." The result of this illegitimate union lead to generations of criminals,
invalids, and feeble-minded individuals or as Goddard called the line "a race of
defective degenerates."
| 23. Deborah Kallikak 
|
Deborah Kallikak, a member of
this line, was one of Goddard’s patients at The Training School. Unfortunately
Deborah is documented as being a normal girl who was very crafty and very good with her
hands by many others at the training school and by experts looking back at collected data.
She was very skilled in dress making and woodworking but lacking in academic areas.
She would have been very able to make a living for herself and she even had many suitors,
three specific romantic relationships that were ended by Goddard or the school when ever
the secret got out. The story of her family history had little scientific basis and
her diagnosis and treatment were very inaccurate. As a result of the decisions
Goddard made for Deborah and the label she was stuck with she would live in institutions
or ‘training schools’ 81 out of her 89 years until she died in 1978. |
Goddard claimed that he could
recognize feeble-mindedness by sight, and therefore he could determine whether an
individual was mentally deficient through as little as a photograph. The validity of this
research method is doubtful. Another of Goddard’s methods relied upon interviews. He
often determined feeble-mindedness through a second hand account of an individual. This
method is clearly flawed. Furthermore, the images Goddard published in the book were
doctored to give the descendents of the "degenerate" line a sinister look. Even
the name "Kallikak" was a fabrication of Goddard’s: the name is a pseudonym
derived from the two Greek words "kallos" (beauty) and "kakos" (bad).
As you can see, this was in fact a biased study in which reality had been severely twisted
to prove a point.
Henry Goddard was a biased author who was more concerned with
popularizing the Eugenicist movement than conducting a scientific study. Goddard’s
erroneous research in conjunction with many others was used as evidence to help pass the
state laws that legalized involuntarily sterilization. Later in his career, Henry Goddard
withdrew his previous beliefs on the hereditary nature of feeblemindedness and questioned
the need for eugenic solutions to the problem of mental deficiency. |
 24. The campus of Vineland Training School |
Flawed Practices That Could Have Been Modified
There was a difficulty defining traits of the disorders and diseases. Eye
and hair color are no problem to pinpoint and define, but epilepsy, intelligence, manic
depression, feeblemindedness, and diseases we know as Huntington’s, Downs Syndrome,
and Autism may have been thrown into to one category.
There was a tendency to treat complex traits (behaviors) as a single
entity coming from one cause or gene. When one of Davenport's friends, a professional
psychiatrist, criticized him for lumping complex human behaviors into single categories
such as insanity, he dismissed the criticism as being "uninformed."
Poor survey and statistical methods were used leaving research and studies not
scientific but mainly subjective. Family charts would be determined by second hand
information not traced back very far. There was creative use data like the way
Laughlin used immigrant statistics from 1921 and population from 1910 to reach the ratios
he used as data for the Johnson Act.
False quantification-a numerical value from IQ test "must be a valid
measure". Henry H Goddard gave immigrants test and claimed: 83% Jews, 80% Hung. 79%
Italians, 87% Russians, all feebleminded –later retracted, affected many people
before that point.
Social and Environmental influences were neglected when intelligences, behavioral
characteristics and other traits were examined. In a 1919 study based on analysis of
pedigrees, Davenport claimed that thalassophilia, or "love of the sea," was a
sex-linked Mendelian recessive trait only appearing in families of prominent U.S. naval
officers. He determined that the trait must be sex-linked since in pedigree after pedigree
only males in the various families observed ever became naval officers. They neglected the
fact that women were not allowed in the Navy.
25. The family tree of seven generations of boat builders.
The eugenics movement declined somewhat in importance by the mid-1930s, for reasons
that are complex and controversial. Most scholars of the subject agree that failure of
eugenicists to keep abreast of rapid developments in Mendelian genetics was not, as
formerly claimed, a major factor. Similarly, apparent links between American and Nazi
eugenics in the 1930s appear to have played only a minor role in bringing eugenics into
disrepute.
Many critiques started voicing how a value or measure could not be
put on sense of humor, personality, character, self respect and many other
characteristics. These and other factors finally prompted the Carnegie Institution to with
draw its funding and permanently close down the ERO in December of 1939.
The older, harsher, more simplistic eugenics of Davenport and his generation declined
because it had outlived its political usefulness. With immigration restrictions in place
and sterilization laws on the books in many states, the eugenics movement had achieved
about as much as could be expected at that time.
26. A drawing of DNA
showing detail molecular composition
How close are we today to embracing a modern form of
eugenics? Will we in the United States someday soon re-walk those paths of trying to solve
our social problems with scientific panaceas? The answer may be yes. A new eugenics
movement would, of course, be called by a different name, but an era of similar economic
and social conditions and a similar political response. Our current philosophy of
"cost-effectiveness" or "the bottom line"- has already arrived.
In the "cutback" atmosphere that dominates
our discussions of other social policies, the mood seems similarly exclusionary and
bitter. For example, legislation that proposes to limit welfare recipients to five years
over a lifetime, the suggestion that welfare mothers with more than two children be given
Norplant (an anti-fertility drug), the idea of "three strikes and you're out"
(three convictions mean a life sentence), and increasing calls for the death penalty.
It would also be unwise to fail to anticipate how we might respond if we found
ourselves in such dire straits. Contemplating our potential for accepting eugenic
solutions is particularly important at a time when it might be possible to alter our
course.
 27. Researchers viewing a DNA gel, working in a la, and
micropipetting a solution. |
The notion that genes have the power to
determine social and personality traits such as criminality and aggressiveness is
becoming popular today in both scientific and lay circles. There have been considerable
resources devoted to research on the genetic basis of many such traits. For example, the
National Institute of Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse has allocated $25 million for research
on the genetic origins of alcoholism. The National Institute of Mental Health has awarded
even larger sums for the study of the genetics of schizophrenia and manic
depression. Other recent studies have attempted to find a specific genetic basis for
conditions such as shyness, novelty seeking, risk taking, proneness to anger, impulsivity,
attention deficit disorder, and the like. |
Meanwhile, the publicity given to each
new or preliminary report on the genetics of human behavioral traits has grown even faster
than the research itself. Every major popular magazine - Time, Newsweek, U. S. News and
World Report, and the Atlantic Monthly, to name only a few - as well as most major
newspapers have carried stories about the newest discovery of a gene for a given disease
or trait. Moreover, all the accounts have been presented against the backdrop of the Human
Genome Project, whose legitimate discoveries about the location of DNA segments for
Huntington's disease and cystic fibrosis, among other conditions, have lent an aura of
authenticity and prestige to the general field of human genetics that further validates
the more hyperbolic popular reports. One major difference here is that the actual gene of
DNA has been located, the proteins it codes for have been identified and the protein's
role in expressing that trait is known when a scientist today claims a gene is the cause
the trait. There is not as much hand waving and people are not allowed to just claim new
evidence with out having proof to back it up.
What can we do to prevent a resurgence of the
Eugenics movement? One of the most important weapons we have is the knowledge that it did
occur in our recent history. Our understanding of that experience can provide powerful
lessons if we are willing to learn from them. To prevent simplistic science can be
perverted to socially destructive ends, again. We also have a far more
sophisticated understanding of genetics today than did our counterparts in the 1920s and
1930s. While this knowledge does not guarantee that simplistic claims of a genetic basis
for our social behavior will not be put forward, it does mean we can counter such
arguments with modern facts. Indeed, researchers have had great difficulty establishing
any satisfactory claim that specific genes cause complex human social behaviors. Few of
the studies claiming such links have been duplicated and many have been withdrawn after
the first flurry of excitement surrounding their publication in professional journals.
| One aspect
that is now acknowledged is the possibility that genes are not rigid bits of information
that invariably lead to the same outcome. Changes in the chemical, physical, and
biological conditions can turn genes on or off or change their degree of expression at
critical periods in the developmental process. In this respect, the genes affecting human
behavioral and personality traits are greatly influenced by environmental input. The fact is that today's researchers have had no greater
success in rigorously establishing the genetic basis for social behaviors 90 years ago.
There have been great advances for all different kinds of other traits that are
already being put into action.
Studies to evaluate environmentally affected traits
and those genetically determined, and the ratios of partial traits would be virtually
impossible. There is no support to subject ourselves and our children to the rigorously
controlled, multigenerational experimentation that would be necessary to begin to tease
apart the relative contributions of heredity and environment in the development of special
behavioral traits. The environment would need to be controlled to clearly evaluate what
influences acted with what intensities at all periods of development. With out that
knowledge we have no real way of determining the relative influence of heredity and
environment in the interaction. |
 28. It is
not genes
alone that determine behavior or personality. |
29.
Technology, computers, and deeper knowledge help scientists today.
 30.Will one class create
super offspring |
Yet
another advantage we have at the moment is experience, both in the scientific and lay
communities, showing that open opposition to genetic determinist ideas can affect the
degree to which they are accepted. Geneticists and other biologists did not stand up
publicly to oppose eugenical claims in the 1920s and 1930s the way some of their
counterparts are doing today. The claims of Arthur Jensen, Richard Herrnstein, and William
Shockley 20 years ago about a genetic basis for racial difference in IQ might have become
quietly incorporated into mainstream biology, sociology, psychology, and educational
theory had not the scientific claims been disputed publicly by knowledgeable geneticists
such as Richard Lewontin and psychologists such as Leon Kamin.Finally, economic and social conditions affected the support
and the publicity awarded to genetically deterministic ideas, then it is clear we must
also work to change those conditions and create an economically more humane and
egalitarian society. Only by exposing the flaws of naive genetic determinism, while also
attending to basic problems in our economic and social system, can we avoid repeating the
worst errors of our predecessors. |
A "Super"
Race?
Some people fear that now that we have the tools to
tinker with our genes, we may be tempted to use them to design a "super" race of
human beings. As a practical matter, this will probably never be possible. It's one thing
to use gene therapy to get rid of an unwanted gene or two. It's a whole lot more to pick
and choose the whole range of genes that make an ideal person.
First, the ideal person would have to be
determined. Then the different genes that come into play to make that ideal would need to
be located and selected. Finally the children would have to be raised so that they grow up
to be ideal. Even if these issues were addressed, the political power to make it happen
would have to be attained. A grand plan to "improve" the human race would
involve the government in personal childbearing and child-rearing choices. This would
certainly be opposed by many and difficult to enforce. After
looking back at eugenics it is obvious that convincing the public is not the hard part of
this process. Determining the ideal and mapping out each gene and all of the filler DNA
would be very difficult and beyond today but probably not our lifetime. Personally the hardest part would be to raise the children so they would
fully express all of the wonderful genes they have.
31. The technological
advances of today will help us rid ourselves of disease, if used carefully
So we may never make a "super" race.
But in more limited ways, we may be able to shape our future. The goal is to be able to
spare ourselves and our descendants from terrible diseases and disorders while leaving
enough variation for the human race to change, adapt and evolve. It will be possible to
select some of the traits of our children, and some that are available already. Would you
want to? Should these choices be available to everyone? At a certain point there would be
a shift of the rich, those able to afford the gene screening and selection, over the poor
who can't afford the same opportunities for their children. At a
certain point the gene adjustments are not longer just life threatening changes but
cosmetic genes a may also be adjusted for the child's benefit. This could snow ball into a
very strong separation of class, those who where naturally born and those who were hand
picked.
One of the important beliefs upon which this country
was built is the idea that we are all "created equal." This is a hard standard
to truly uphold today, tomorrow there might actually be a fault in that statement. There
may be fundamental differences in the way each person is created and should they all get
the same freedoms as the next person? Equal rights will be a whole new ball game that has
to be played.
Your Genes, Your Choices
32. A human nucleus
with colored chromosomes.
There are so may ways that genetic research is
changing the world we live in. It's truly exciting and overwhelming. Who holds the power over the way that genetic research will be used, for good
or for bad. The way that society uses its knowledge of genetics
will be shaped by the everyday choices its citizens make, and who they appoint as leaders.
Roosevelt was right as good citizens we each do have a duty - but this
duty is to be educated about our world, our society, our government and to actively use
that knowledge to increase the quality of life for all.
